Posted on February 19th, 2014

The Libertarian argument that the state should be uninvolved in the institution of marriage is attractive but unworkable. It makes the state grow more powerful, not less:

Redefining civil marriage will further erode marital norms, thrusting the state even more deeply into leading roles for which it is poorly suited: parent and discipliner to the orphaned, provider to the neglected, and arbiter of disputes over custody, paternity, and visitations. As the family weakens, our welfare and correctional bureaucracies grow.

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Even if the state were absolutely controlled by traditionalists, there is no set of policies that could promote traditional marriage or strengthen the family–certainly none that could be accomplished without a vast increase in policing power. Divorce, illegitimacy (and increasingly non-traditional “marriage”) are now not rare or even unusual, they are the cultural norm.

We could provide financial incentives for traditional relationships and moderately inconvenience people who want to divorce, but without a staggering expansion of police resources there is no way to ensure that people aren’t simply taking advantage of the system–either by simply lying (as is already common practice for groups that seek to take advantage of state benefits) or by entering into fake marriages that will ultimately produce great harm as they too become normal.

And since traditionalists oppose expanding state regulation (especially the sort that this would require), there’s no way this could be implemented; the political coalition would fracture and nothing would be accomplished. We would just be left with toothless policies and another layer of useless welfare bureaucracy.

However, the state is not controlled by traditionalists. Our influence is already slight (at best) and it becomes more negligible by the day. If trends continue, it is doubtful if the “conservative” party will even be able to muster control of the House in another 20 years–forget about any other branch.

Current state policies on marriage and the family (not even counting recent innovations on non-traditional “marriage”) are tremendously harmful, since they provide financial rewards for women who seek divorce and for women who have illegitimate children. Then there’s the tax burden that forces many women into the workforce who would otherwise prefer full-time mothering, the state-protected abortion industry, and the public school system which is used to indoctrinate progressive principles.

I suppose, with an absolutely traditionalist-controlled state, we could reverse some or all of these harmful policies. But the damage to the culture has already been done. The pervasive social pressure that kept many people from fleeing marriages or from engaging in premarital sex simply does not exist anymore. Divorce rates and illegitimacy rates will remain high even in the absence of these policies.

Since there is hardly any hope that the Left will lose control of the state, and even less hope that a Left-controlled state would ever reverse its anti-family policies, it seems like getting the state out of the business of marriage is a step (however small) in the right direction.